The Heart of Mid-Lothian - Penn State University

monarch, who, after having commenced a daring inroad
into his enemy’s territories, is suddenly recalled by an
invasion of his own hereditary dominions. He was
obliged in consequence to return from the half-won borough
of Bubbleburgh, to look after the half-lost borough
of Bitem, and the two pairs of horses which had
carried him that morning to Bubbleburgh were now forcibly
detained to transport him, his agent, his valet, his
jester, and his hard-drinker, across the country to Bitem.
The cause of this detention, which to me was of as little
consequence as it may be to the reader, was important
enough to my companions to reconcile them to the delay.
Like eagles, they smelled the battle afar off, ordered
a magnum of claret and beds at the Wallace, and entered
at full career into the Bubbleburgh and Bitem
politics, with all the probable “Petitions and complaints”
to which they were likely to give rise.
In the midst of an anxious, animated, and, to me, most
unintelligible discussion, concerning provosts, bailies, deacons,
sets of boroughs, leets, town-clerks, burgesses resident
and non-resident, all of a sudden the lawyer recol-
Sir Walter Scott
41
lected himself. “Poor Dunover, we must not forget him;”
and the landlord was despatched in quest of the pauvre
honteux, with an earnestly civil invitation to him for the
rest of the evening. I could not help asking the young gentlemen
if they knew the history of this poor man; and the
counsellor applied himself to his pocket to recover the
memorial or brief from which he had stated his cause.
“He has been a candidate for our remedium miserabile,”
said Mr. Hardie, “commonly called a cessio
bonorum. As there are divines who have doubted the eternity
of future punishments, so the Scotch lawyers seem
to have thought that the crime of poverty might be
atoned for by something short of perpetual imprisonment.
After a month’s confinement, you must know, a
prisoner for debt is entitled, on a sufficient statement to
our Supreme Court, setting forth the amount of his
funds, and the nature of his misfortunes, and surrendering
all his effects to his creditors, to claim to be discharged
from prison.”
“I had heard,” I replied, “of such a humane regulation.”